Kali­fa Clyne

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Tim Gopeesingh says this year has pro­duced the best ex­am­i­na­tion re­sults in T&T's his­to­ry.Speak­ing at a post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, Gopeesingh spoke about the re­sults of the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE) and the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC).

He said there had been im­proved re­sults in both units of the CAPE ex­am as com­pared to 2010.

He said unit one of the CAPE ex­ams, which was tak­en by 8,245 can­di­dates saw over 65 per cent of stu­dents ob­tain­ing grades one to three, while over 93 per cent of stu­dents achieved grades one to five.He said that was the first year a dig­i­tal me­dia ex­am was writ­ten.Stu­dents achieved greater than 90 per cent scores in 19 out of the 25 sub­jects in the ex­am, he said."There has been an in­cre­men­tal im­prove­ment in aca­d­e­m­ic im­por­tance since 2010," he added.

Gopeesingh said that 93.1 per cent of stu­dents who wrote unit two of the ex­am got grades one to five, with 68.1 per cent of stu­dents achiev­ing grades one to three."The per­for­mance in CAPE con­tin­ues to im­prove and get bet­ter each year," he not­ed.He an­nounced that of the 21,829 peo­ple who did CSEC, 64.6 per cent re­ceived grades one to three."Al­most two out of every three stu­dents writ­ing the ex­am re­ceived grades one to three," he said.

Gopeesingh al­so said there was a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in math­e­mat­ics, with the 55.2 per cent of stu­dents pass­ing the sub­ject this year as com­pared to 41.9 per cent in 2010.He said the im­prove­ments were due to the hard work of teach­ers and prin­ci­pals as well as di­rect in­ter­ven­tion by the min­istry."This is the best per­for­mance that we have had in this coun­try, in all three ex­am ar­eas, the SEA (Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment), the CSEC and CAPE," he said.